


Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area

by ebbet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drinking, Gay Male Character, Grocery Shopping, M/M, Oblivious, UST yes u bet until it is RST, being sensible is deeply attractive, but it's thematic ok, but one bottle of wine split between two lightweights, does the title make sense, is this the first fic for this ship, macmilligan, no because they are not using self-checkout, rarepair express, the shopping trolley is deeply symbolic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29578269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebbet/pseuds/ebbet
Summary: Ernie MacMillan was doing his weekly shop in an ordinary way on an ordinary day.
Relationships: Cormac McLaggen/Ernie MacMillan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 14





	Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to G + E ♡ herminions headcanons  
> [not beta'd; lmk about errors]

Ernie had just reached for the sixth apple when he heard someone say, “Hey.” 

He selected the sixth and seventh apples, dropping them into his reusable crocheted produce bags. Ernie didn’t know people who said hey. Not personally, anyway. He was done with the apples now and would be moving along shortly, so they could have access to the apples shortly. 

“Hey.” 

It was insistent now. 

Ernie glanced up and around the produce department—and stepped backwards. 

Cormac McLaggen grabbed his arm just as Ernie crashed back into the banana display. 

A bunch fell into his shopping trolley. 

“Apples, huh?”

Ernie blinked down at the hand on his arm, the bananas in his basket. This evening had taken a bizarre turn. To be accosted in the middle of the produce section by an old school chum one hadn’t seen in seven—maybe eight? nine?—years, and then, of course, to prove the old stereotype correct by blundering into an inanimate object just because there was a surprise occurrence—

“You like bananas?” the surprise occurrence said, letting go of Ernie’s arm and bending over to scoop them out of his trolley. Ernie attempted not to breathe. 

It was an expensive cologne. 

“I do not,” Ernie said. Crisp enunciation. A complete sentence. 

“Potassium, though.” The bananas were settled back onto the display, just behind Ernie’s left ear. “Good for after a workout.” 

“Oh?” Ernie asked.

“Yeah,” the old school chum said and ran his hand through his hair. “Maybe I should get some.” 

He stepped closer to examine the bananas on display. Unfortunately, Ernie did not move sideways quickly enough. 

“What do you think of these ones?” 

Ernie didn’t dare turn his head. That would bring him well within the six inch zone that was to be preserved around and between casual acquaintances. He made a noncommittal sound. He stared at the curly kale across the aisle. It was on special offer.

Bananas having been selected, there was movement and Ernie fled towards the carrots. 

Distanced now established from the cologne and the unbuttoned top collar, Ernie smiled and asked, “How long has it been, then?” 

The bananas were cradled in one massive hand. Weighed slightly. Tossed gently. “Years?” 

“Years. Indeed.” Ernie glanced down at the carrots. They were not on the list but apparently he would have to eat them because now it would be too strange to not buy some after this level of scrutiny. “So how have the years been?” Brightly, brightly. 

“Oh, no, get the ones with the tops still on. Minerals, Mum’d say.” 

Ernie grabbed blindly towards the greenery. He didn’t have any produce bags left. 

“Life? It’s been good? Mine has been alright,” he babbled, thrusting the carrots into his trolley. He wheeled it around towards the potatoes. That was on the list.

“Cooking for two?” 

“I just like potatoes.” 

He held his hands up in mock innocence. “No judgement, no judgement.” 

“Your life has been good?” Ernie pressed. He was the golden boy. Youngest coach of the Magpies in history. Calendar shots with the team. 

Florence had bought the calendar. Ernie ignored it when he had to ask his secretary a question. 

There was a long pause. Long enough that Ernie felt his gaze being drawn upwards like some freakishly strong magnet was dragging his eyes from the hand on the sweet potatoes up the dark wool coat to the broad shoulder to the golden curl that fell just so onto the charcoal cashmere scarf and finally to those eyes. Hazel. Lashes. Crinkled. 

“Alright,” he said. “Much better now.”

“Oh?” Ernie gestured towards the meat counter and began rolling his trolley away. He wasn’t going to get distracted from the weekly shop. 

“Run into an old—“

“What can I do you for, gents?” 

A small bow to Ernie, who ordered his customary chop (singular), two sausages, and one roasting chicken. 

There was silence from the giant lurking behind him. Well, he could judge, but some of us had to live on bureaucratic salaries. Ernie pressed his lips together. He tucked the white paper packages into his trolley. 

“And you, mate?”

“Is your filet any good?” 

“Any good? The best you can get in London.”

“Two filet mignons, then, and do you do the oysters or is there a fish counter?”

How flash. Ernie stared at the raw mince. 

The packages were received. Ernie shot the butcher a grin of thanks and darted off towards the bread. Multigrain loaf, check. 

There was a thump. Ernie turned. The steaks were on the ground.

“I always do this,” he said, juggling the bananas and what must be the oysters and a baguette. “I always forget a basket.” 

“Well,” Ernie said, bending down. “You’re lucky you ran into me and my trolley, then.” He laid the steaks on top of his chicken, then kept his breathing even because there was suddenly a crotch right at eye level and a baguette was sliding into the trolley—God, it’ll get above itself, Ernie thought—as he stood back up slowly. 

“Extendable charm? In a non-magical trolley? Naughty, naughty.” 

“Potatoes are quite heavy otherwise, and so is proper juice, I mean, I usually get Ribena, but one likes to be prepared, and I don’t overdo it, in the amount of things I put in, so it wouldn’t be noticeable behaviorally, and it’s an Undetectable Extension charm, anyway, and also, as I work in the Department of Misuse of Non-Magical Artefacts, I am quite familiar with how these charms can go awry, and what to do to make them unnoticed, so it’s hardly likely that an object I charmed myself would be recognizably magical, but it has gotten rather uppity lately, because they will go and develop personalities, and I doubt the baguette will help—“ Ernie realized he was going off and clapped his mouth shut. 

He was being stared at. Properly ogled, with the mouth sort of half-open, softly pink with brilliantly white teeth, and then it stretched into a grin and a laugh; Ernie blushed with shame. It was always the same, this kind of compulsive need to explain that drove everyone away because nobody really cared about these small things, they just said things to say things and one was somehow supposed to know which of these things meant the actual thing and which was a posturing non-remark to be acknowledged laughingly instead of footnoted. 

“Anyway,” Ernie said and hustled off towards the biscuit aisle. 

“What kind of juice?” 

Ernie blinked at the Hobnobs. 

“What kind of juice do you fill up your—" again, the conspiratorial undertone— “magical trolley with?” 

Ernie waited for the knife. 

He glanced up. It was an open flavor of smile. 

“What kind of juice?” 

Dark chocolate, that was classy. Not that quidditch stars, or coaches, ate biscuits probably. High protein diets or something. No carbs. Ernie didn’t want to bend over to return them to the shelf. 

“Those are the best,” he heard, “but what kind of juice?”

Ernie blinked. “Pressed apple juice, which is sometimes called cloudy; then pink grapefruit; then blood orange; then that apple elderflower one they have sometimes; and if it’s a special week, one of the fruit smoothies with red fruits.” He shook his head. “It’s just an ordinary week, though. I have a Ribena at home.”

He didn’t hear anything. He looked up, then down the aisle. 

He’d gone. 

Ordinary people didn’t have lists of juices. Ordinary people felt like different things on different days because having changing preferences was normal. Ordinary people certainly didn’t spout off their odd grocery habits to old schoolmates they hadn’t seen in years while blushing every two seconds just because said old schoolmates might be very, very fit and probably very, very married. Or engaged. Men didn’t wear engagement rings, Ernie reflected, examining the blue wrapping of the rich tea biscuits. 

He shook himself and wheeled his trolley to the tills. 

“Oi, Ernie!” He was at a till already, waving his arm.

Oh, yes, Ernie did have the steaks in his trolley. He trundled over and began to unload. He laid the baguette on the belt and blinked at the grapefruit juice. There was pressed apple. And blood orange. And two fruit smoothies. 

“Oh no, I—“ Ernie blurted, just as the elderly woman said, “I’m sorry we don’t have the apple elderflower, love; your boyfriend said it was your favorite.”

“Fourth favorite,” Ernie heard from beyond a kind of strange buzzing in his ears. “It’s his fourth favorite.”

“Er,” he said, and bent back towards the trolley. He put the items which were not his onto the belt and then reached for the divider, when a hand dropped onto his arm. 

“I’ll get it,” the person attached to the hand said. “If,“ and the voice dropped, “If you’ll have me over for dinner, so I don’t have to eat the oysters and steaks alone and make myself sick.” 

Ernie glanced at the hand. The woman at the till smiled at them and scanned one of the smoothies. 

It would be rude to insist. He nodded. The hand squeezed his arm, and then he was standing at the end of the till, groceries all snug in the trolley. 

“After you.” 

Ernie re-buttoned his coat and stepped outside. Of course it would be raining, the sort of horrible rain that melted the snow. He stopped to unsheathe the umbrella that lived in the side pocket of the trolley and then felt a warm, firm body collide with him.

“It’s raining,” Ernie said, hoping it was dark enough in the half-light as a hand gripped his waist for balance, then let go. 

“And you plan on walking home in this?” 

Ernie handed him the umbrella. “You’re taller, so you have to hold it.” 

“You haven’t charmed this, have you?” 

“No,” Ernie said. “Would be a good idea though—maybe expandable in size relative to the persons it was shielding?”

“It’s good how it is, but,” an arm pushed under his until Ernie, biting his bottom lip, allowed his uncooperative arm to rest lightly on top of the dark wool sleeve, “Maybe something so they don’t go inside-out, you know, with the wind.” 

“That is certainly unpleasant,” Ernie said.

There was a conversational silence. Rain pattered down on the umbrella. 

“I was thinking about Apparating us, but this is alright.” 

“Walking is good for your health. Heart disease is the number one killer in Britain.” He ignored the bicep pressed against his shoulder. “Though I suppose you, er, exercise. Or at least you don’t have a desk job, because being sedentary is a risk factor for an early death, which is why I attempt to walk as much as possible, but, er, I’m not sure, do you have a desk job?” 

A snort. 

“Some desk. Mostly flying.” The arm pulled Ernie closer. “You’ll get wet.” 

Ernie stared straight ahead. His flat was two blocks away. He would survive this racing pulse. 

“Here,” he said and stopped to untangle his arm so he could drag the trolley up the steps. 

The hand was on his. “Unlock the door; it’s bloody freezing out here, I’ll get it.”

Ernie obeyed, watching his fingers unlock the front door and flick the hall light on trail up the banister and struggle with the key to the door to his flat and then flick the light in his flat on and shuffle awkwardly into his own coatrack while attempting to take his coat off and to take the umbrella back. 

And then somehow Ernie was seated at his own dining room table with a glass of wine watching his old schoolmate rummage around in his kitchen with the sleeves of his white Oxford rolled up and his quick, flying hands shifting between pans and knives. 

“This is a good knife.”

“My aunt,” Ernie said, “her husband’s a knife-sharpener, one of the courier ones, so he gets a discount on the knives—“ 

He shut himself up with a sip of wine. He wasn’t ashamed of his non-magical family, not anymore, because he wasn’t a shit and people weren’t as shit about it either, but superstars probably weren’t interested in—Ernie swallowed. 

“My knives need doing.” Then, with a grin, “You’ll have to give me your uncle’s number.” 

He turned back towards the sink. Ernie nodded, and then realized he couldn’t see him, so said too loudly, “Yes.” 

The brilliant smile again. 

“Are you sure you don’t need help? I feel a bit of a tit, letting you do all the work in my house.”

“Tit? Are you eighty-five?” A wink. Ernie wiped his palm on his trousers. “I invited myself over, anyway, so it’s only fair.” 

Wine was being drunk and swallowed and there was a hand through the hair. Ernie felt like he was being watched. He dragged his eyes away from the now two unbuttoned buttons. More wine. That was the way. 

The steak was, of course, perfect. 

There were three unbuttoned buttons now and most of the wine was gone and they were sitting on the slightly sagging couch. 

Then the wine was all gone, and Ernie, casting about for some appropriate way to end a convivial evening with an old school chum who one hadn't really been chums with if one didn’t own brandy or cognac or whatever those brown liquidy drinks in the cut glass were, because he really didn’t drink that much, or at least, not in the serious kind of adult way that required those short, fat, wide glasses with big ice chips in them or those stones that had confused him the time the Minister had poured him a glass to toast to his promotion to deputy head, blinked across the table and asked, “Hob Nob?” 

“Yes,” and there was an emphatic nod. “But it’s so hot.” 

“No tea then,” Ernie said, making his way to the kitchen on slightly wobbly legs. “But you do eat biscuits?”

“Biscuits,” he heard echoed, so he found a plate and attempted to arrange them in a circle but they were all a bit slidy-around on the plate, so he concentrated on making it back to the sofa with all the biscuits still on the plate. 

There now was a shirtless man on his couch, draped over one arm with half-lidded eyes. “Hot,” he said. 

“Hot,” Ernie echoed, the word sticking in his dry mouth. 

The biscuits were sliding again. He decided it would be safest if he lowered himself to the ground at the same time as he placed the biscuits on the coffee table, because then they were less likely to fall from a great height and break.

He might as well eat a biscuit when he was down here. 

“Biscuit,” he heard from the couch. And then a plaintive, small, “Please.”

Ernie, staring fixedly at his fiddle leaf fig across the room, thrust a biscuit over his left shoulder, waving it in the general direction of the partially unclothed man who was on his sagging brown sofa. 

“Hey, hey, no.” 

A hand brushed his, waving the biscuit away. 

Ernie turned his head. “I thought you wanted a biscuit.” 

“No, well, yes, but, no, but—Ernie. Hey.”

Ernie braced himself and then shifted to face the couch. 

“Hey,” there was the smile, but now a kind of slow, melting smile, and the slow blinking and Ernie felt the blush rising again, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away and it was definitely not polite to be staring this much at a guest in one’s home, especially because they were inexplicably unclothed, but also Ernie was starting to feel a sweat break out, but he wasn’t about to— 

“Hey,” the insistent one insisted. 

“Hey what?” Ernie said, and decided to take his jumper off because it was, in fact, suddenly quite warm in the flat, but somehow he got tangled inside and his arm wasn’t bending quite the right way, or maybe it was stuck on his cuff. 

Then he was being untangled. Blinking against the light, Ernie realized he was firmly between the legs of his partially-clothed guest, and he was just about to shuffle backwards, because he was quite sure that heartthrob quidditch coaches were definitely not single or homosexual, when there was another, “Hey.” 

“Yes?” Ernie said, a stab of irritation catching in his throat, that someone this beautiful could be in his house, on his couch, for no particular reason, acting in a very confusing and unpredictable manner. “Do you know any other words?” 

“Hey,” he said. 

One of those hands reached out and smoothed back Ernie’s hair, stroked his cheek, then, with one final, gentle, “Hey,” Cormac cupped Ernie’s face in his hands and kissed him. 

He couldn’t help moaning into it, or from gripping Cormac’s legs for balance as he rose to his knees, and then he remembered. 

They broke apart. 

Ernie glared at him. “You’re not gay.” His heart was fluttering wildly. He couldn’t seem to lift his hands from those thighs. 

“I thought you were smart,” Cormac said, his eyes crinkling into a grin. “A bloke kissing a bloke is pretty gay.” 

“You weren’t gay at school,” Ernie said, staring down at his own right hand, still gripping someone’s leg. 

Cormac leaned back on the couch. “I was a shit at school,” he said, “Probably because I didn’t know I was gay. Doesn’t excuse being a shit, but might partially explain it.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling.

“How could you not be kind of a shit though, at Hogwarts, a school that bases its entire culture around classifying people based on what they’re like at age eleven, and athleticism is the most vaunted attribute, so anyone who was hot and good at flying was bound to be a shit, and you were both,” Ernie rambled. “Not that you’re not either of those things now. Not neither. Either? Neither. Neither? Oh, fuck.”

There was a chuckle. Ernie watched his abs ripple with the movement. 

“You kissed me,” Ernie said at last. Cormac was staring at him. “You don’t have a shirt on.” 

“Well, stalking you around a grocery store until you noticed me, buying the sexiest groceries I could think of, inviting myself to your house, and cooking you dinner while flirting my damndest wasn’t seeming to get through, so I had to up the ante.” It was a smirk, but a kind one. “Plus, you were making me sweat.” 

“Me?” Ernie said.

Cormac groaned and dropped his head onto the back of the couch. “I’m sorry.” He raised his head and sighed. “You’re—you’re—“

“I’m what,” Ernie said, glaring at him intensely. 

Cormac’s chest heaved. “Like, right now, your hands, you, uh, you’re just so intense about everything, it’s really hot, fuck, sorry,” he let out a shaky breath. “I just want you to do things to me, but, uh, you don’t seem into it, so, I’m sorry, I’ll go, I don’t want to bother you.” He sat up a bit, shaking his hair into his eyes. 

Ernie flexed his fingers, then settled his hands back across Cormac’s thighs. 

“Stalking me around a grocery store?” 

He slid his hands towards Cormac’s hips, slowly, incrementally, relishing how his bottom lip trembled as he sank back into the couch. 

“I saw you at the Ministry,” he said in a kind of half-gasp, “Visiting my uncle.” 

Ernie paused. 

“You, uh, waistcoat. Floating duck? Your secretary asked for my autograph? I wanted to say hi, but you seemed, uh, busy.” 

Ernie blinked. “Is that why Florence failed to secure the left wing of the explosive?” He let out a curt breath. “I am going to have to have words with her. That could have caused serious harm. Chasing after autographs while transporting—“

“Explosive?” 

Ernie shrugged. “Most non-magical devices improperly magicked turn into incendiary devices or explosive weapons.”

Cormac groaned. “It just gets worse and worse.” 

“Worse?” Ernie asked, squeezing Cormac’s thighs and letting go. Cormac’s eyes shot open. 

“You just get hotter, and hotter, like, you’re not just a dream in a waistcoat, you’re also secretly James Bond,” he said with a moue of distaste. “It’s not fair.” 

“Oh?” Ernie said. He stood, bent, retrieved a biscuit, and ate it thoughtfully, staring at Cormac, who was just staring back at him. “I don’t think I’m quite James Bond,” he said at last. “More Q.”

“That’s even worse,” Cormac said weakly. 

“Well,” Ernie said, “I’m sorry you think it’s unfair, but, I think it’s quite unfair that you’ve had the drop on me and,” he continued, as he moved Cormac’s knees together and straddled him, “I think it’s quite unfair that you were attempting all these flirtatious moves without alerting me to the fact that I should see them in this particular light because I was under the impression that this was a coincidental encounter with an old school chum.” 

“Old school chum,” Cormac said weakly, but his hand settled on Ernie’s waist. 

“Who for some reason that I could not quite ascertain was quite interested in my weekly shop.” 

“Meet cute?” 

“We met when I was eleven and you were twelve,” Ernie said, threading his fingers into those golden curls. “Besides, I assumed you’d be happily married by now, not lurking around grocery stores trying to pick up men you went to boarding school with. You are quite rich and famous and handsome.” 

Cormac preened. 

“You see how this sudden attraction to a midlevel bureaucrat who wears waistcoats and both owns and uses a shopping trolley might seem a tad incongruous.” 

“Well,” Cormac said, the corner of his mouth pulled up into a grin, “My uncle says you’re going places.”

“Does he?” Ernie tucked some of his hair behind his ear, then kissed his temple. He kissed all along his cheek, relishing the little breathy sounds Cormac was making, and then, just after kissing the corner of his mouth, pulled back. 

Cormac’s eyes flew open. “Yes,” he said, “Please.” 

Ernie shifted on his lap. “Interesting.”

The hazel eyes met his, and Ernie realized, suddenly, that there was a hint of anxiety, of desperation, of want—and that Ernie had the power to crush him, for whatever freak universe they were in where some butterfly had crashed into a window instead of fluttering its wings, Cormac McLaggen wanted him. 

Of course Ernie wanted him back. It was the only sensible thing. 

So Ernie said, “I don’t do casual,” while running his thumb across Cormac’s bottom lip. 

Cormac nodded. “I don’t want casual.” His brow furrowed. “I don’t want anyone else to—“ 

Ernie bit back a laugh. This was some magical fucking dreamland, where Cormac thought that Ernie was having sexual intercourse with a person or persons unknown on the regular, but why Ernie suddenly lived in this multiverse was a complete—time to stop thinking, though. 

“Yes, well, good, that’s sorted,” Ernie said, taking Cormac’s face in his hands. 

He started into those hazel eyes, steady and vulnerable. The left one had a kind of eye-freckle. Ernie knew that this was it. He hadn’t given his heart away to anyone before. But now it was done. Cormac already had it somehow. 

“I’m quite glad you bought the fruit smoothies,” he said and kissed Cormac’s nose. “I think this is no longer an ordinary week.”

And then he kissed Cormac, fully and properly, because Ernie was a sensible man, and it seemed the only sensible thing to do. 


End file.
